[JURIST] About 300 protesters demonstrated Saturday in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia [JURIST news archive], calling for a US retrial of Khalid Adem, a Ethiopian immigrant to the United States who earlier this month was convicted of circumcising his daughter [JURIST report] in 2001. In what was believed to be the first US case of its kind, a Georgia state court [Gwinnett County courts website] sentenced Adem to ten years in prison for sexually mutilating his then-two-year-old daughter with a pair of scissors. The Georgia General Assembly [official website] enacted a bill [text] to specifically criminalize the practice of female genital mutilation [World Health Organization backgrounder] in 2005, as the practice was not technically a crime in Georgia [JURIST news archive] at the time of the incident.

Female circumcision is performed in various cultures and religions to discourage promiscuity among women and denies women sexual pleasure, causes dangerous infections, creates deep emotional scars, and can even kill, according to opponents and human rights groups. The procedure is not specifically illegal in Ethiopia [US State Dept. backgrounder], but government policy there discourages "harmful traditional practices." Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

International Day for the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination

March 21 is the International
Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination [UNESCO
factsheet].On March 21, 1804, the
Code Civil des Francais, the reformed French
civil law often referred to in French as the Code Napoleon, and in
English as the Napoleonic Code, went into effect in France, Belgium,
Luxembourg, and French colonies.

March from Selma begins

On March 21, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. began
his third march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to protest racial
discrimination in the Jim Crow South. By March 25, over 25,000
people lead by Dr. King reached Montgomery, Alabama. Specifically,
the march called attention to suppression of African-American voting
rights and a police assault on a civil rights demonstration three
weeks prior.Five months
later, in August 1965, Congress passed the Voting
Rights Act. Read a history
of the march from Selma to Montgomery and a history
of the Voting Rights Act.